1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a fuse box. More particularly, the present invention is intended to make a compact fuse box mounted on a battery.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, as shown in FIG. 10, a fuse box 5 having a fuse 6 is connected to a battery 1 via a lead wire 4 by connecting a battery terminal 3 on the periphery of a battery post 2 located on the upper surface of battery 1. In this arrangement, however, the battery 1 and fuse box 5 are spaced distant from each other, requiring lead wire 4 with two connection positions. Therefore, the increase in parts also increases the time and labor for installation, not to mention, requiring an installing space for fuse box 5. Further, when an external force is applied to the lead wire 4, the lead wire 4 may be damaged.
The above described problem could be solved by mounting the fuse box on the upper surface of the battery box and connecting the battery and battery fuse to each other without using the lead wire. However, since the height of the fuse box is large, it is necessary to provide a large space over the battery box. Thus, if the space has limited height, the fuse box cannot be mounted on the battery box. That is, by installing fuse box 5 on top of battery 1 a new problem arises. In the fuse box 5, as shown in FIG. 9, the battery fuse 6 is housed within box 7, with the longer side of the fuse 6 being vertical and the shorter side being horizontal. Fuse 6 has an input terminal 8b and an output terminal 8c that project downward from a lower-end surface of a fuse body 9 and couple with terminals t1 and t2 respectively. Terminal t1 connects to the end of the electric wire w1 and terminal t2 connects to the end of the electric wire w2. Due to the orientation of fuse body 9 the height H of the fuse box 5 is large. In the case where fuse 6 is directly connected to a battery, the battery fuse is large because it has a large capacity. Thus, the battery fuse has a large height, which in turn causes the fuse box 5 to have an increased height and a larger installing space is required to accommodate the fuse box 5.